A memorial sign hung for Suzanne Seemann near the site of her 2012 death. Photo by Andrew Goff.

Warning: This post includes descriptions of graphic evidence from a double-murder investigation.

A shattered windshield spotted with dark stains. Blood smears wiped across an emergency-brake handle. More blood spots on a center console and the driver’s side seat, which is sprinkled with tiny squares of safety glass.

These were a few of the images shown to the jury on day three of the double-murder trial of Jason Anthony Warren. Prosecutor Paul Sequeira worked systematically through a series of witnesses, mostly law enforcement personnel, who described the physical evidence left behind on the tragic morning of Sept. 27, 2012.

Warren, whose physical illness forced an early recess in Wednesday’s proceedings, is accused of murdering Dorothy Ulrich with a sword in her Hoopa trailer, then stealing the Kia sedan she’d been driving and deliberately using the vehicle to plow into three women and a dog running on Myrtle Ave./Old Arcata. Suzanne Seemann and the dog were killed in the collision; Seemann’s friends Terri Vroman Little and Jessica Hunt were seriously injured.

Warren faces two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and special allegations of lying in wait and torture for the murder of Ulrich. If convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Thus far, Sequeira is building the case against Warren along the same path he laid out in his opening arguments, following the trail of evidence as it was discovered by law enforcement. The morning’s testimony began with Jerome Cantrell, a former vehicle inspector with the California Highway Patrol, who said there were no mechanical defects in the stolen 2005 Kia Spectra that Warren allegedly drove that day.

Now with the National Transportation Safety Board, Cantrell recounted the details from his Oct. 11, 2012 inspection of the Kia, saying there were no defects in the car’s power train, steering, suspension, brakes or tires. The driver’s side front tire had low pressure (10 pounds per square inch, well below the suggested pressure of 30 PSI), Cantrell testified, but otherwise the car was in perfect working order.

CHP Sgt. Mike Berry later testified that the front tire could have lost pressure in the collision. Cantrell had inspected it for leaks and found none, and Berry said that during a heavy impact, a tire can come partially off its bead, lose its seal with the wheel rim and lose air before resuming its shape and releasing.

Photos of the car displayed in court today showed that the windshield had been smashed into a concave, spiderweb-like pattern, with a hole in the center and dark brown stains in the lower right-hand corner, by the driver’s side. There were dents in the bumper, a handprint on the hood and a large dent behind the driver’s side rear tire, among other damage. The photos were taken shortly after the car was found abandoned in the parking lot of the Eureka Adult Day Health Services building on Eureka’s California Street.

Cantrell testified that he took the battered Kia for a test drive during his inspection on Oct. 15, two-and-a-half weeks after the fatal collision. Despite the low air pressure, Cantrell said the car functioned just fine. While it pulled “very slightly” to the left, that was easily controlled with the steering wheel, he said. And when the brakes were applied, the car went in a straight line.

During cross-examination, Warren’s defense attorney, Glenn Brown, asked even more detailed questions about the condition of the car, including the depth of the tire treads and material of the wheels.

CHP Officer Charles Steen took the stand next, offering testimony about the chart he prepared of the “field of evidence” at the scene of the collision. Prompted by questions from Sequeira, Steen gave the measurements of all related materials found in and along the roadside on the morning of the crash. A sock belonging to one of the women was found seven feet, six inches west of the roadway’s dotted center line. Roughly 10 feet from there was the strap to a headlamp. 

The evidence continued north from the alleged point of impact: an Avenue of the Giants baseball cap 14 feet, six inches west of the dotted line. A runner’s headlamp 16 feet east of the line. Triple-A batteries, sprays of safety glass, gouges in the asphalt, chunks of human hair. 

Cantrell had also noted the locations of the women’s bodies where they came to rest: Suzanne Seeman’s lifeless body was found 172 feet north and 28 feet west of the start of the field of evidence. Jessie Hunt’s badly injured body was 219 feet north, 10 feet west of the same mark. And Terri Vroman Little’s was 216 feet north, 29 feet west.

The next witness was Debra Zanotti, who found the battered and abandoned Kia at Eureka Adult Day Health Services, where she worked. A coworker later brought her Dorothy Ulrich’s wallet, which had been tossed onto the second-story patio of the health care facility, Zanotti testified.

Later in the day, jurors were shown security footage captured by one of about 20 cameras at Indianola Storage, a business located near the Indianola cutoff, not far from the scene of the crime. This particular camera, which is motion-activated, points toward Indianola Rd., and Humboldt County Undersheriff Billy Honsal, who was a DA investigator at the time, described what he found on the video footage between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Sept. 27, 2012.

A man sitting with Sequeira at the prosecutor’s desk queued up the video, which included eight separate motion-triggered clips from that morning, spliced together with labels showing the time they occurred. At 5:06 a.m., headlights could be seen heading west on Indianola, toward Hwy. 101. Seven minutes later, a semi-truck was recorded heading in the opposite direction. At 5:28 a.m., headlights cross the camera’s field of vision heading east on Indianola, toward the roundabout where Indianola meets up with Myrtle Ave./Old Arcata Rd. Honsal testified that this particular car looked like a light-colored sedan.

At 5:31 a.m., another car heads east. This, too, looked like a sedan, Honsal said. At 5:42, headlights head west. One minute later, a car heads east, toward the roundabout. Honsal said this car looked like a Ford Crown Victoria, probably belonging to law enforcement. Then, at 5:46, the camera showed a police car with its emergency blue-and-red lights spinning, driving quickly toward the roundabout. Three minutes later the cop car was followed by what looks like a fire engine, also with its lights on, Honsal testified.

As with the other witnesses, Brown’s cross-examination seemed aimed at poking holes at the obvious storyline this evidence seemed to suggest. He asked Honsal, couldn’t someone go north from the roundabout? Or south? And couldn’t they be headed to one of any number of destinations from Indianola? For that matter, couldn’t someone get onto Myrtle Ave./Old Arcata Road from other routes? Was there any effort made to get security camera footage from any of those other routes?

“Not that I know of,” Honsal said.

Berry, the sergeant with the CHP, testified that he drove from Hoopa to the scene of the collision to get a rough estimate of the time that drive would have taken: about 50 minutes. Again, Brown questioned the reliability of that information on cross-examination. Berry drove the speed limit, but was he aware that some people don’t drive so prudently? Some drive faster? So the rate could have been different than the 50 minutes he clocked?

Berry allowed that it could.

On redirect, Sequeira said to Berry, “You were just trying to give a general timeframe?”

“Yes,” Berry said.

It wasn’t clear exactly what Brown was hoping to prove or disprove with his detailed questioning, beyond simply destabilizing the credibility of each piece of the puzzle. Nor is it yet clear how all those pieces of evidence fit together in the prosecution’s case.

The trial is scheduled to last another six weeks, minus a week off for Thanksgiving. Judge Timothy Cissna told the jury that he’ll update them on the timeline when court resumes, Monday at 9 a.m., though he indicated that things are moving along at least as quickly as planned.

Note: This post has been changed from an earlier version to reflect the proper point of reference for measurements in the field of evidence.

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